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=== News Update ===
Australian Muslim group says school refusal is 'racist'
Wednesday May 28, 12:20 PM
<http://asia.news.yahoo.com/080528/afp/i-080528042012asiapacificnews.html>
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Photo: AFP
<http://asia.news.yahoo.com/080528/afp/i-080528042012asiapacificnews.html>Click
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SYDNEY (AFP) - An Australian Muslim group charged Wednesday that a
Sydney council's refusal to allow an Islamic school to be set up in
its area was a "victory for racism".
Camden Council, on Sydney's south-western outskirts, unanimously
rejected the application for a 1,200-pupil school on Tuesday night,
prompting cheers from hundreds of residents who attended the meeting
to oppose the plan.
While the council said the decision was based on planning issues, the
proposal sparked ugly protests, including two pigs' heads impaled on
spikes at the school site last November with an Australian flag
draped between them.
Muslim community organisation Forum on Australia's Islamic Relations
(FAIR) said it did not accept the council's explanation.
"Planning grounds is only a smokescreen for the real issues which
were related to community tensions and potential social upheavals if
the school was approved," executive director Kuranda Seyit said.
"I see this as a victory for racism."
Resident Kate McCulloch, who attended Tuesday night's meeting in a
wide-brimmed bush hat wrapped with an Australian flag, said Muslims
were not welcome in the semi-rural area.
"We just don't want Muslim people in Camden," she told reporters
after the meeting.
"We don't want them not only here, we don't want them in Australia.
They're an oppressive society, they're a dictatorship."
Australia has more than 340,000 Muslims, according to the latest 2006
survey, with many concentrated in Australia's largest cities Sydney
and Melbourne.
One male resident expressed concerns Muslims would take over the area
if the school was approved.
"My kids can't read Islamic, how are they going to go to that school,
it's all crap," the man told ABC radio.
"The next thing there'll be a mosque, then there'll be the little
town that comes with it. It's not appropriate for the area at all and
common sense has prevailed."
The school's backer, the Quranic Society, has said it will appeal the
council's decision in the courts.
It has previously denied any links to extremism, saying it wants to
provide children in Sydney's growing Muslim community a good
education and religious instruction.
In 2005, anti-Muslim sentiment boiled over into riots on the Sydney
beach suburb of Cronulla, where rioters targeted people of Middle
Eastern appearance.
And in 2004, a severed pig's head was impaled in front of a Muslim
prayer centre in Sydney's northwest.
source:
<http://asia.news.yahoo.com/080528/afp/080528042012asiapacificnews.html>http://asia.news.yahoo.com/080528/afp/080528042012asiapacificnews.html
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-muslim voice-
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BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW
